


our fate cannot be taken from us

by zhelaniye



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood and Injury, Friends to Lovers, Grief/Mourning, M/M, basically a recollection of their relationship until molly... well
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:54:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25933225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zhelaniye/pseuds/zhelaniye
Summary: "The earth will remember him", Caduceus had promised. And so will Fjord, in a never ending struggle against time and memory to keep Mollymauk with him.There is a lot he has lost, and a lot he will never let go. This is what he remembers.
Relationships: Fjord/Mollymauk Tealeaf
Comments: 9
Kudos: 27





	our fate cannot be taken from us

The faint lights of Trostenwald had been swallowed up by the horizon long before the colourful group of strangers halted their horses and stopped their cart at the side of the road. The last bits of sunlight lingered lazily on the horizon, shedding a faint pinkish glow on the endless fields of grass around them. They all look at each other awkwardly for a moment, assessing their situation, before beginning to set up for the night.

“Someone should keep watch”, Beauregard says, already shuffling the leaves and soil around her feet, trying to make herself as comfortable as the mildly damp bug-infested fields will let her. 

“I will”, says Mollymauk behind him, and it takes Fjord a long moment to realize the tiefling’s next words are directed towards him, so much that it takes overhearing Nott’s hissing snigger to break him out of his stupor. “Pretty one”, the circusman is saying, “you seem good with your sword. You stay up with me.”

Fjord gives a startled strangled sound that the tiefling seems to take as acceptance because he begins to walk, examining the perimeter, and stops after a few steps, wordlessly making it clear he’s waiting for the half-orc to join him. 

Nightfall comes dragging its feet, as if the land itself clang to the daylight with all its might, and Fjord finds himself sitting on a rock, scrutinizing the shadows the dying embers of their campfire create on the nearby vegetation, and trying to tune out the humming of Mollymauk, who sits - slouches - with his back on the grass and his legs propped up on the cart, fingers tracing imaginary drawings on the night sky.

“What a day, huh?”, Fjord offers, uncomfortable when the silence stretches on for too long. 

Mollymauk turns his head towards him. “Why, do you refer to finding yourself on the road with five strangers with whom your only connection is committing murder and having been arrested?”.

“Happens to you often, does it?”, Fjord asks.

“Not when the slain creature in question has been a friend of mine for two years, no.”

“Right”, the half-orc mutters, and wishes it were darker so he could punch himself for his forgetfulness. “I’m sorry for your loss, by the way. Truly.”

Mollymauk hums. “It’s alright”, he says, and Fjord tries, but does not detect more apprehension that normal in his tone. The tiefling adds, before shaking his head and resuming his low humming. “I just wish I knew what changed.”

There’s nothing Fjord can offer to this beyond empty platitudes, so he doesn’t offer anything, and he has the weird feeling that the man beside him appreciates that.

The night hours drag on tortuously slow, with nothing more than the scurrying of animals and insects around him, fleeing the presence of their group as soon as they feel them. 

“You did well back there”, Molly says suddenly, just an hour or two before dawn, while Fjord is busy trying to blink the sleep out of his eyes. 

“Huh?”, he replies, eloquently. 

“You know”, the man says, making a broad gesture with his adorned hand towards the road they had come from the day before. “You helped the circus. You could have easily let the blame fall on us all to clear your name up, but you helped us. Seems basic, does it? But not everyone would have done so.”

It’s too damn late - or early, at this point - for eloquence, Fjord decides, but he can tell the man’s feelings are genuine, so he nods, wordlessly, accepting the praise where it’s given.

Mollymauk looks back at the camp, taking in the sight of Beauregard stretched, her lithe figure occupying the space two grown adults would, of Jester trying to drink in the faint heat of the embers that have already grown cold, and the little goblin curled up in the lap of the wizard, as dirty as the wheels of their cart after a day trekking through the mud, and he snorts, once.

“This certainly will be an interesting trip.”

**********

Whatever Fjord had been expecting out of his arrival to Alfield, stupidly twisting his ankle while running through a dark hole on the ground in pursuit of some gnolls was not it. He grinds his teeth against the pain and twirls, raising his hand to strike down a snarling hyena that lunges against him, and stops when a giant, shiny lollipop falls on top of it, splattering a grimy combination of clotted blood and crushed bone all around him. 

He stares back, perplexed, and is met with Jester’s jubilous scream and the beginning of a victory dance that is cut short by the vicious attack of a gnoll, which she moves to avoid with such an annoyed and offended expression that Fjord feels the urge to laugh. 

He doesn’t feel the pain as much as he feels the ice he conjured around his armor shatter when a gnoll’s teeth sink deep into his shoulder, a startled scream leaving his throat in a hurry. His sword falls from his hand and leaves a wet trail of salt water where it lands a few feet away, and he barely has the time to mutter “oh, fuck” before a blur of color enters his field of view.

His eyesight blurs as Mollymauk slashes at the gnoll again and again, until both of them are covered in dark blood and the creature’s pained screams have stopped entirely. And then he stands in front of him, sweat pooling on his brow and purple hair plastered to his forehead, checking Fjord’s figure up and down as he stands, his eyes stopping on the open wound and the droplets of blood that trickle into the stone from it. And he smirks, placing his hand on Fjord’s uninjured arm. 

“Try to keep up, pretty one”, he says, and rejoins the battlefield again with a flourish, leaving Fjord to summon his falchion into his hand, deeply embarrassed for a reason he cannot quite ascertain. 

Much later, their way back to the village is slow and pitiful and marked by a pointed silence, only broken by muffled pained grunts and the buzzing of the flies that are already starting to gather around the severed head on their cart, that stares at them accusingly, with its empty eye sockets and lolling drying tongue on display. Caleb makes a face, eyes still clouded over, more memory than man, and covers it as he notices Watchmaster Bryce approach.

There is diplomacy, there is small talk and there is money exchanged back and forth, there is a mind-numbing tiredness coursing through Fjord’s body that he has to fight away with every breath, and finally there is a clear although kind dismissal from the elven Watchmaster.

“I want a drink”, Mollymauk says, and clicks his heels together before turning and heading towards their tavern, his cape swooshing behind him elegantly, despite the dried blood and the dust, as if he hadn’t just been fighting to the death mere hours ago.

By the time Fjord arrives at the Feed and Mead tavern, the tiefling is well on his first glass of whiskey - or whatever the liquid he twirls around while wrinkling his nose before downing it in one go is. 

Fjord sits by him and shakes his head when he tilts his glass towards him in silent offering. 

“Thanks for, huh, for what you did”, the half-orc says, clearing his throat.

Molly stares at him, a contented half-smirk sitting comfortably on his lips, and something tells Fjord he should find this strange man more infuriating than he does. 

“I- huh-”, Fjord continues, and swallows even though his mouth is painfully dry. “Yeah. I thank you. Right.”

The tiefling’s smirk widens and he does not move to hide it, but he nods in acknowledgement, and it feels genuine, so Fjord leans back against the wall and allows himself to begin to relax.

“So where did you learn your arcane abilities?”, Molly says, his attention still fixed on the last drops of whiskey on his glass.

Fjord thinks about water, and a body in the water, and being watched, and says, “from the sea, really”. 

Mollymauk raises an eyebrow at him, unimpressed, and studies him for a moment, seemingly pondering whether he was interested enough to pursue his line of questioning, and shrugs, deciding against it. 

“So how long has it been since you learnt all of that at the sea?”, he asks. 

Fjord scratches his head, considering it. “Few months, really, not much if I’m honest.”

The surprise in Molly’s face seems genuine and the warlock feels a startling amount of satisfied pleasure at that. 

“So you’re a quick learner, huh”, the tiefling says, leaning back to take a better look at him. “Good to know.”

Fjord looks at the table taking his eyes away from the infuriating creature before him, and hopes that he isn’t blushing. Hell, he really hopes he is not blushing. 

The door from the tavern swings open and Jester and Beauregard enter, followed by Nott and a pale looking Caleb.

“Who wants to play a game of cards!”, exclaims Jester, and Molly takes one last lingering look at him before turning in his chair, producing his deck from underneath his cape with a flourish and a small bow , his grin widening

**********

The gates of Zadash loom over them, with its impossibly high towers standing behind them, reaching upwards in a seemingly endless wave of interwoven colors and stone that scrapes the sky. The hustle and bustle of the city that begins immediately adjacent to the thick walls produces such a stark contrast with the dirty, unassuming outskirts that Fjord feels dizzy and has to look away for a moment, and directs his gaze towards his companions. 

Jester is pointing everywhere at once, her excited voice reaching a high pitch that Beau somehow doesn’t seem to mind as she follows her gaze as best as she can. Nott and Caleb seem to shrink into themselves, as if wishing they could become one with the dirty soil under their feet, and he can see Caleb’s hands shake where they’re closed into tight fists inside his pockets. 

And Mollymauk… the grin that spreads across his face is the most genuine Fjord has ever seen on the man as he takes it all in - not the buildings, but the people. He takes in the wandering merchant carts, the grunts of sour-faced passersby as they knock into each other in their hurry, the stink of garbage on the side roads and the inviting warmth visible through the windows of the taverns and houses as people flee back home for the late evening hours. The tiefling smiles and his eyes sparkles as he drinks it all in with single-minded focus, and Fjord is slightly alarmed when he realizes how unutterably beautiful the other man is.

He’s still lost in thought when the man snaps his head towards him and he reacts far too late to pretend he wasn’t staring, which Molly thankfully does not seem to register. 

“Invigorating, is it not?”, he exclaims, loudly.

Fjord nods politely. “What is?”

“This!”, he exclaims, twirling around himself, extending his arms and pointing out towards their surroundings. “So much  _ life _ here.”

“So you’ve never been in a big city before?”, Fjord asks, leaning towards him to hear him over the noise of a bar brawl breaking out at the end of the street, which makes Molly’s smile widen even more if possible.

“I must have”, he says, and before Fjord can question that answer his pace quickens as he snaps his fingers, mischief in his voice clear as day. “Come on, pretty one, I would like a drink before the night falls.”

The next few days seem to simultaneously stretch forever into the future and fly by in the blink of an eye with the sheer strangeness of them. 

“This is definitely not how I was expecting my year to go”, Molly says one night after a long card game and even longer jars of beer downstairs, when Fjord’s conscience was already edging sleep. 

He blinks himself out of his slumber with effort, and grumbles something that he hopes sound like, “what do you mean?”

Molly lets out an uncharacteristic giggle and a hiccup and faces Fjord. "You know", he says, unhelpfully, and tries to fist bump him softly, missing his arm and hitting his bare chest instead, and turns.

Before the half-orc can gather his scattered wits, the other man yawns loudly and almost immediately starts snoring. Fjord closes his eyes and realizes he will wake up with a damp spot in his arm from the drool that trickles out of Molly’s mouth, and does not want to wonder why the thought does not irritate him. Not now.

He goes to sleep. 

**********

Days go by and Dolan keeps them occupied, but that doesn’t stop the city from luring them all in in search for their share of excitement. And that’s how they find themselves in the warm candlelit interior of a tavern, watching Mollymauk try to teach Jester how to juggle daggers without slicing her fingers off. 

“It’s about balance”, he says, leaning forwards and placing a hand of Fjord’s shoulder to steady himself. “Look”.

He throws the dagger in the air and it lands on his fingertip, perfectly balanced, producing only a single droplet of blood. Beau and Nott cheer loudly as he places the dagger back in his sheathe and smirks, glancing at Fjord out of the corner of his eye, as he puts his finger in his mouth and licks it clean. 

Plenty of thoughts race through Fjord’s mind far too quickly for him to make any sense of them, and the skin at the back of his neck tingles. Mollymauk’s eyes are still fixed on him and the walls are too small all of a sudden. The lights are too bright. And his gaze drops to the other man’s lips, slowly but inexorably, as if moved by a higher power. His lower lip glistens in the tavern light and-

“I did not know you possessed arcane knowledge, Mollymauk”, Caleb’s voice breaks through the atmosphere and suddenly Fjord can breathe again, and almost finds himself wishing he couldn’t. 

“Oh, I don’t”, he replies, breaking his gaze away after a beat and directing it towards the wizard, “it’s just skill”. 

Caleb’s brow furrows as he studies Mollymauk, avid for an arcane secret Fjord doubts he will find. 

“He does know magic, though, Caleb”, Jester says. “He read my cards!”

“He was bullshitting you”, Beau says, matter-of-factly. 

“No, he was not”, Jester replies, frowning. “Tell her, Molly”.

“He can do things”, Yasha’s quiet voice cuts through. “With his cards, I mean. I have seen him.”

“I would like to see it”, Fjord says, and doesn’t realize he’s spoken until every face in the table turns towards him. 

“And pray tell, pretty one, what is it you wish to see of me?”, Mollymauk says coily, with amusement in his voice and a small, friendly mocking bow. 

He ignores Beauregard’s pointedly raised eyebrow as best he can, and leans towards the smirking tiefling, whose eyes widen almost imperceptibly when Fjord finds the courage in his slight inebriation to smirk right back. 

“Read my cards”, Fjord says.

Nott’s and Jester’s excited hushed chatter accompany the sound of Molly deftly shuffling his cards against the table with one hand and drumming a quick rhythm on the back of Fjord’s chair with the other. The tiefling turns towards him, and crosses his legs.

“Alright”, he says, and produces his first card from the deck without looking. He places it in front of him, not taking his eyes away from Fjord. 

“The five of cups”, he announces, and there’s an intake of breath from Jester, followed immediately but a “well, what does that mean?” from her direction. 

“There’s a weight in your past”, Molly says, his voice taking a slightly deeper note, “something happened that you did not expect, and you’re still navigating through the new stitches it sewed in you. You feel as if something fundamental has been changed within you without permission, and it burns when you allow yourself to think about it. You still belong to yourself. You only have to remember how to accept that.”

Fjord swallows once, twice, and pushes all thoughts of fire, and sinking, and the darkness of the ocean from his mind. 

Mollymauk’s eyes are fixed on his, and he feels pinned to the wall and opened raw, exposed for everyone to see. It’s terrifying. It’s exhilarating. It’s not enough.

He says, “Is that all?” and the other man hums with a smile before extracting the second card from the deck. He puts it down and frowns for an instant.

“The three of swords”, he says, and pauses, regarding Fjord before continuing. 

“There is a darkness in your future. You will miss something - someone, and a void will be created in your life that you will not know how to fill, nor whether you should fill it at all. There will not be enough time for you, and you will hurt deeply, for a time. It’s not your fault. It has never been your fault.”

There is a heavy silence on the table and Molly shakes his head, his wavy locks getting tangled on his adorned horns, his smile dimmer than he ever remembers it being. “I’m sorry, I-”

“It’s alright”, Fjord says, quickly, and straightens his back before saying. “Go again”.

“Are you sure, Fjord?”, Nott asks, “because that was pretty grim”.

“Of course I am”, he drawls. 

Molly hesitates for a second before reaching again towards the deck. He places the card on top of the table and his expression does not change, but his eyes sparkle with mischief.

“The ace of wands”, he says. 

“Now, the intended meaning for this card has sparked controversy for generations, but where I’m from they call it the lucky card, if you catch my meaning.”

He winks and he puts his cards back under his cape. Beau laughs loudly and Yasha snorts, and Fjord surprises himself with how unaffected his voice sounds. 

“And where  _ are _ you from, if I may ask?”

“Oh, pretty one, wouldn’t you like to know.”

Molly takes a big swig out of his jar and turns towards the table, and their thighs brush when he shifts. Fjord’s leg burns with the small contact and he is finding it extremely difficult not to think about it, not to wonder what the man would do if he were to put his hand on his thigh.

The night goes on and there’s laughter, and there’s ale, and there’s Fjord’s thigh pressing against Molly’s underneath their crowded table. There is a war brewing inexorably somewhere to the east, but they don’t know about it yet, and for the moment, it’s okay.

***********

They’re scrambling out of the High Richter’s house when the tower explodes and debris falls from the night sky like rain. They run, forgoing stealth and caution as blue lightning surges across the sky, exploding on the cobblestones of the empty avenues. 

“Find them”, the booming voice comes from the darkness of the night, and something within Fjord recoils at the sound. There is chaos and screaming, and a body hits the floor nearby.

They keep running. 

  
  


Caleb looks at the stolen object that buzzes quietly between his hands, the bits of dry blood still attached to its surface creating a stark contrast on its otherwise pristine exterior, and he pales. His hands continue shaking long after they take it from his grasp, still buzzing, and his eyes do not focus on them even when they quietly close the door behind them, leaving him to guard the thing, for lack of a better word. 

Outside, the dust is still falling over the Tri-Spires.

  
  


Mollymauk falls on the bed on his back, breathing heavily. Fjord rests his head against the bedposts. The silence that stretches between them is not uncomfortable. 

There’s a feeling of fear, of worry, of excitement coursing through Fjord’s chest, overwhelming him, and he succumbs into fits of hysterical laughter. He feels helpless against the might of the empire, invincible after having completed their impossible mission and stretched thin under Mollymauk's warm, bewildered eyes.

“What’s so funny?”, he asks.

“I don’t know what the fuck just happened”, Fjord says, wheezing as his laughter subsides.

“Meddling in the Empire business never did anyone any good”, Molly says, sitting on the edge of the bed, still looking at Fjord with something burning intensely in his eyes he could not quite identify.

That chilling thought is enough to dry Fjord’s amusement up.

“Do you think we’ll take the blame for it?”, he asks, or tries to, because Mollymauk speaks before he can get a word in.

“May I kiss you?”

And here's the thing. Fjord has always prided himself on his diplomacy, which comes with being good at talking and understanding people. It’s a role he wears and he does it well. But Mollymauk’s words ring in his ears, devoid of any comprehensible meaning.

“Come again?”

“May I kiss you?”, Molly repeats, in exactly the same tone, with an undercurrent of amusement.

A few moments of charged silence pass as Fjord stares at the man before him, his small lopsided smile and the way his tousled hair, sweaty and dirty after the run through the sewers, falls on his left eye. He takes in the tattoo that adorns the side of his neck, traveling downwards over his collarbone and sinking into his shirt.

Fjord thinks, nonsensically,  _ I could see where that tattoo goes  _ and something within him spurs into action clumsily.

In the end, he is the one to kiss him. 

He leans forward and Molly makes a pleased surprise noise when his lips impact against his. His hands fly out, directionless, and land on the tiefling’s waist, pulling him in. Fjord feels the other man’s arms circling his shoulders. He feels his long nails scratch his skull lightly when his fingers get tangled up on his hair, pulling softly on it as the tiefling shifts his weight to place himself in his lap, and the sparks that it sends flying down Fjord’s spine compel him to open up his mouth, which Mollymauk takes advantage of happily. 

Fjord feels Molly’s small fangs scratch his lower lip slightly as he kisses him and makes a noise at the back of his throat, which causes the tiefling’s lips to curl into a smile without breaking the kiss. 

Fjord spares no thought to anything but the feeling of Molly’s mouth in his, not to the implications of this, not to the fact that they don’t really know each other yet, or to the fact that they are knee-deep together in the murder of one of the most prominent figures in Zadash. There’s only the other man’s weight over him and the wetness of his lips, soft and wonderful, in the entire world. 

Fjord’s hand ventures forth from where it’s clamped down on Molly’s waist. He untucks the man’s rumpled shit from his pants and caresses the skin of his back with a gentleness that sends shivers up the tiefling’s spine from the sheer gentleness of it, and the stark contrast with the intensity of the kiss. 

Molly’s skin is rough and covered in thin, vertical marks under his calloused palm in some places, and irregular and rough scar tissue and what he thinks are burn marks in others. He wants to ask, tries to move to do so, but Molly kisses him harder and his train of thought vanishes on the patterns Molly’s tongue is tracing inside his mouth. 

Fjord moves his mouth slightly and kisses the man’s cheek, slowly but bravely marking with kisses his face as he makes his way downwards, towards the tiefling’s neck. Molly hums approvingly, almost purring when Fjord gently bites his jaw experimentally, and in that moment their weight shifts and Molly’s elbows give out under him, sending him tumbling into the mattress with Fjord still deeply entwined into his arms. 

They look at each other, their kiss broken for the first time since their lips first collided, breathing deeply. 

Fjord feels dizzy and weirdly disconnected from his body, despite the feeling of his entire skin tingling, and he notices with something a lot like pride that Molly’s eyes are slightly unfocused and glazed over.

“That was good, huh?”, Fjord says, his voice still somewhat wobbly. 

Molly laughs a small laugh, not unkindly. “I did not see that coming.”

“Didn’t you, though?”

Molly smiles and gets up, sauntering around the room while getting rid of his coat and his mud-covered boots, looking for all the world as if he hadn’t been kissing the living daylights out of his travel companion just twenty seconds ago. 

Something about the way he moves is equally infuriating and enticing and Fjord’s mouth runs ahead of his brain when he asks, “good enough to repeat?”

Mollymauk doesn’t stop on the way to the bed and places both his hands on Fjord’s chest, kissing him deeply for what seems like a lifetime tightly packed inside fifteen seconds. 

“There goes my answer, I suppose”, Fjord mutters to himself when they break apart. 

Molly pats him friendly on the chest and shakes his hair, fluffing his pillow to better accommodate his horns. 

“Good night, pretty one”, he says, mid-yawn.

Fjord doesn’t sleep for a while, and when he does, his dreams are quiet and warm and do not involve water. 

***********

There is not a single good reason for the sting of betrayal that pierces Fjord’s chest, but it’s there. They’re in the basement of one of the most dangerous crimelords of this side of the Empire, and someone is staring at Mollymauk with adoration in their eyes and saying a name that is not right. This is not a good place to want anything, not here and now, but the momentarily bitterness at the back of his throat cannot be helped. 

_ We don’t know each other _ , Fjord thinks, and it’s true. They have shared a bed for weeks, properly shared it for days, but they don’t know each other yet, they aren’t anything to each other besides hired swords with a temporary common goal. And yet Fjord cannot help but feel the mark the tiefling left with his mouth on his shoulder underneath the armor as he watches him break away from the person’s embrace.

The Gentleman calls for them to walk forwards and they unthinkingly fall in formation. 

“We’ll talk later”, Molly mutters under his breath, with his jaw clenched tight.

Fjord nods. 

  
  


“It’s not me”, Molly says, much later, sitting on the edge of their bed, tapping with his foot against the wooden floor in what would have been a nervous tick if Molly had been the sort of man to have nervous ticks. 

“Nonagon?”, Fjord asks, laying in the mattress stiffly, trying to find a position where his back did not hurt. Those damned caves had been a clusterfuck and his exhaustion had permeated to his very last bone.  _ Fucking river creatures, revenant spirits and whatnot _ , he thinks, bitterly.  _ Shitfucks _ . 

“Yes. And Lucien. And whatever else. I am not that.”

Fjord hums. “I think most of us struggle with our past, Molly. Especially with the company you’ve been keeping lately, I think that’s a pretty safe bet.”

The tiefling huffs in frustration, and waves his hand describing a wide arc.

“I cannot struggle with something I do not remember, or care to remember. I cannot struggle with something I cannot claim. It isn’t  _ my _ past.”

“What if you - or, well, whoever you were before - left something unfinished? Like a friend, a sibling… a partner. Or a child.”, Fjord asks. 

Molly shakes his head. “What would be the point of going back? I would not recognize them, just as they would not recognize me. Would you want a stranger parading around the face of someone you loved and lost?”

There’s a pause, which Molly uses to lean forwards, setting his hand on Fjord’s knee. 

“Besides, that man, whatever he did- he died in a ditch in a frozen forest, alone. I don’t want that to be my legacy. I don’t want to be a man who deserves that.”

There’s a ferocity in Molly’s eyes as he says this, and Fjord feels his chest swell.

“I understand, Molly”, he says, and he’s surprised when the other man’s tense shoulders seem to relax infinitesimally. “For the record, I think you’re brave”.

“Brave?”

“Yeah, I don’t think it’s easy to walk around without a past”, he says, placing his hand on Molly’s jaw with delicacy. 

The kiss, when it comes, is not unexpected. There is a gentle firmness to it, as if Molly was trying to imprint something into it, an elusive meaning Fjord fruitlessly tried to chase.

“I get to choose things, and to keep them”, Molly says, moving his neck to the side to allow Fjord to work on the complicated laces of his shirt, and taking the half-orc’s leather pauldrons off his shoulders. “This here. All of this. I chose this. Not him. This is mine”

He buries the last words in a kiss, but Fjord catches them. Or thinks he does. He wonders at the man between his arms, so open now, giving all of this so freely to him without being asked to, or expected to do so. He, who seems untouchable sometimes.

They tumble into the sheets and Molly swiftly closes any attempts at reopening the conversation Fjord tries to make, with his mouth and teeth, and Fjord soon lets it rest in favour of exploring the places Mollymauk’s tattoo reach, kissing his way there. But he feels something different that he can’t quite name, something that has shifted between them, like the first piece of a puzzle that falls into place and reveals the first outline of a bigger picture that is still out of reach.

Dawn breaks over Zadash and the world starts waking and, unbeknownst to it, two tired bodies go to sleep tangled up together in the dirty bed of a warm tavern.

***********

There’s a downpour of rain and thunder over the barren fields outside of Zadash and Fjord can’t say he minds water, but he never thought he’d miss the - surprisingly lacking in the way of bugs - beds of the Song and Supper Inn so dearly.

Jester and Nott scurry underneath the cart, attempting to remain as dry as they possibly can, and Beau and Caleb sit under the pouring rain, looking surly into the distance where Zadash and the promise of warmth and a roof aren’t visible anymore. 

Yasha sits with her back to the group, transfixed by the lightning, and all the muscles in her body seem tense and ready to snap into movement. Mollymauk takes a long, slightly worried look at her before sitting down in the mud next to Fjord, his long heavy coat splashing with the weight of the water it’s drenched in. 

“Fuck this weather”, he says, as a way of greeting.

Fjord smiles. “You dry-landers can’t handle a little bit of water?”, he teases. 

“Not when it ruins my clothes”, he replies, and Fjord feels the sudden urge to kiss his frown away. He refrains from doing so, but just barely. 

There’s a comfortable silence as both of them hopelessly try to position themselves some way their clothes will shelter them from the worst of the rain overnight, and Mollymauk quickly gives up with a hiss of irritation, resigning himself to a night of frozen feet and wet hair.

He wordlessly leans into Fjord’s shoulders and rests his head there, his horn ring digging into the juncture between the half-orc’s neck and shoulder, not uncomfortably.

“So”, Fjord begins, “fleeing from the claws of the Empire, are we?”

“What were we supposed to do? Get drafted and shoved into the frontlines? Because that would have ended up so well.”

“I know, I know”, Fjord says, “I wonder what it is they wanted us to do, however. Ten thousand gold… that’s something.”

“Probably something too big to escape its consequences”, Molly says.

There’s a pause in the conversation as a thunderbolt so strong it knocks down Beau’s staff on top of her head from where it was propped up to the cart startles them. Molly sighs and gets up on his feet, looking wretched, and something warm and unnameable expands on Fjord’s chest at the sight of that ridiculous, gorgeous man.

“I’m going to sleep. Or try to.”

Fjord is about to reply, wishing him a good sleep, when the words die on his lips. The tiefling bends down and places a finger on his chin, tilting Fjord’s face up, and kisses him briefly but deeply, before sauntering away without a word to his spot in camp.

There’s a stunned silence and then a suspiciously goblin-like whistle breaks it. Caleb looks surprised but, mostly, mischievous, which is a look Fjord had never expected to see on the wizard’s forlorn features. 

“Get a room!”, Beau exclaims and Molly flips her off without looking at her. “Fuck you, Molly!”, she adds. 

Fjord thanks the gods for the darkness that hides his blushing when the tiefling turns before engaging in verbal sparring with Beau and winks at him.

He’s hit with a sense of belonging he has never felt before, something big and fundamental he does not find the words for, something he puts in a box and sets apart, promising himself he’ll analyze it, but he can’t shake the warmth it has spread to his chest.

Maybe things are looking up for him, he realizes, in an empty field under the pouring rain. He can figure it out. 

************

Arcane energy that feels both foreign and a part of himself flow through him, traveling down his extended arm to his fingertips and into his falchion, releasing itself in a blast of energy that causes fish-man-monster-whatever guts and debris to explode and hit Mollymauk, standing in defensive position gripping his iced scimitars. 

“Son of a bitch”, the tiefling calls after him with an amused smile when Fjord winks before shrouding himself in arcane mist and teleporting himself right into the range of another one of those creatures. 

There’s something raw and impressive about Mollymauk’s swordsmanship, about the enthralling way he waves his scimitars around, and the speed he gains while doing so, becoming a blur of death, blood and colour. Fjord cuts through scales and armor and feels the tiefling guarding his back, easily closing the spaces that Molly leaves open in his flourishes. 

He cuts and ducks and parries strikes that aim for his stomach and feels arcane energy coursing through his body, feeling as if he was wearing his own skin inside out, crackling with power. 

They’re still standing when the last of the creatures fall, and his body tingles as the last of his spell slowly fades away. Molly limps up to their group, slowly gathering at the bottom of the stairs, and puts his hand on his shoulder in passing. 

“Well played”, he says. 

Fjord bows and Mollymauk rolls his eyes fondly.

Fjord fixes his - still quite wobbly from the spell - attention on the blood slowly dripping from Molly’s side and pushes his cape apart with the tip of his falchion. Three deep horrible gashes bleed steadily through the fabric the tiefling has done his best to tie over them. Fjord’s stomach plummets.

“Molly-”, he begins. 

“What?”, he asks, following his gaze. “Oh, these? They’re nothing. I’m fine. Truly.”

“Molly”, Fjord repeats, sternly this time. 

“Don’t you let your pretty head worry”, the tiefling replies, and gets on his tiptoes to kiss the half-orc’s forehead when he grumbles.

“Quit flirting and come see this”, Beau calls to them.

“You ruin everything, Beauregard”, Molly says with a smile, already moving towards her. 

The warlock shakes his head and sighs, and begins walking too. 

  
  
  


Fjord rests his head against the cool stony entrance to the cave, absent-mindedly hearing his companions chatter amongst themselves as they secure the looting and begin to make preparations to rest before leaving the god-forsaken swamp they are in. He hears Jester send a cheerful message to The Gentleman and Nott and Caleb speak in hushed whispers. He also hears light footsteps approaching from the wooden staircase towards the outside of the cave.

“How are you feeling?”, Mollymauk asks. 

Fjord cracks his eyes open.

“After that showdown?”

“Yeah”, Molly says as he sits cross-legged by him. “What was that about?”

“I have no idea”, Fjord replies, truthfully, and tries not to think about the guttural booming voice that still rings in his ears.

Molly regards him for a moment and hums, then he lets his body sag with a wince. Jester had closed his wounds and made them stop bleeding profusely, but the area must still be sore. 

“Don’t worry, I just need a good night’s sleep”, he says, in reply to Fjord’s wordless worried glance. 

“That was a good performance down there, though”, Fjord says, putting his arm around Molly’s shoulders.

The tiefling smiles and kisses his wrist delicately, then turns and kisses his jaw right under his earlobe.

“You should see the performance I could give you up here.”

Fjord produces a choked-up snort as Molly moves his legs elegantly to climb to his lap.

“You’ve got a little blood here, pretty one”, Molly says, caressing Fjord’s forehead with his thumb and following its trace with his lips.

“And here”, he says, doing the same with his cheek.

“And here”, he puts his thumb on Fjord’s lower lip, caressing it, staring at the man under him transfixed for a moment before Fjord surges up and kisses him deeply, pulling his body towards him as close as he can. 

Molly’s air gets kicked out of his lungs and he tries to hide a wince in the kiss, but Fjord immediately pulls away.

“I’m alright, I’m alright”, Molly says, already desisting in his attempts to chase Fjord’s lips from where he keeps himself out of reach.

The half-orc holds him uptight.

“So much for the stellar performance you promised”, he jokes.

Molly carefully leans on him, finally being mindful of his injuries, and Fjord busies himself disentangling his locks and jewels from his horns. 

“Just let me sleep for ten hours, or sixteen, and then you’ll see”, the tiefling remarks.

They sit together in comfortable silence for a few minutes, Fjord listening to Mollymauk’s breathing slowly even out against his chest and taking in the sensation of his hair sliding between his fingers, with his eyes closed, more than keeping an eye out for dangers outside.

A voice calls them down and Fjord opens his eyes with difficulty.

“Come on”, he says, carefully nudging the sleepy man on top of him, who stifles a yawn and tries to move in as dignified a manner as he can possibly muster,

“Help me up, will you?”, Molly says, and Fjord does so, fondly rolling his eyes.

He doesn’t take the arm off the tiefling’s shoulders as they walk down to join the rest of the party.

**************

This is the last thing Fjord remembers: lacerating pain. It expands through his side as the acid melts through his armor and it is unbearable.

He falls to his knees and struggles against the slumber that threatens to overcome it, but the agony makes it impossible to concentrate.

The large figure of the troll looms over him, roaring, as his vision blurs.

He thinks he hears Mollymauk scream before everything around himself dims and disappears.

  
  


He coughs himself awake and has to fight down the wave of nausea the healing potion being shoved down his throat produces him.

He tries to move his arm, experimentally, anticipating a flash of agony, but it is surprisingly painless.

His eyes slowly come into focus once again as he feels waves of healing energy expanding through his body, soothing his frizzled skin.

“Thanks, Jester”, he murmurs to the cleric that’s sitting besides him. 

“You guys, you have to stop making me heal you every time we fight”, she whines, and Fjord would laugh if his chest hadn’t just been nearly mauled by a giant fucking troll.

He moves his eyes a bit and takes in the figure kneeling by his side and, he guesses, the reason the ground under him is so soft. Molly holds his head in his tight and is in the middle of wiping the last of the toxin from his leather pauldrons when Fjord musters the energy to smile up at him. He’s immediately confused by the lack of response from the man. 

Mollymauk has a frown on his forehead, which is enough of a rare occurrence that it sets him on edge. Something bad must have happened. 

“Is everyone alright?”, he asks, trying to look around without letting the dizziness overcome him.

Caleb sits far away, with his head in his hands, and Beau seems to be trying to talk to him, if her atrociously bad soothing body language is enough to go by. 

“What happened?”, Fjord asks.

Molly waves his hand without looking away from his wound. 

“You know how he gets around fire sometimes”, he says, then quickly adds, “what the fuck were you doing, Fjord?”

“Help me up”, Fjord replies.

Molly puts his hand on Fjord’s neck and helps him sit up slowly. The half-orc’s stomach lurches for a moment, but he feels more focused. He slowly begins to gather the pieces of his awareness.

“What the  _ fuck  _ were you doing?”; Molly repeats. 

“Slaying a swamp troll?”, Fjord tries, and he’s amazed by how the tiefling can raise one eyebrow without breaking his frown.

“You did a piss poor job, if you want my opinion”, he replies dryly. 

Fjord looks back to where the troll had been last he remembers and takes in the half burnt corpse, parts of it still smoking and reduced to ashes and dying embers.  _ Ah _ , he thinks, impressed,  _ so that is what Caleb got so distressed about. _

He notices deep gashes with icy edges on the bits of body that are visible through the crispy mess the troll had become, done almost viciously. Something overwhelming lands in his chest and starts pecking at his heart.

“You were worried about me?”, he asks out loud, wonderingly, and he would slap himself if we could.

Molly raises his eyebrow even higher and does not dignify that with an answer, but his shoulders do relax marginally. The thing pecking at Fjord’s heart starts tearing at it with desperation and plenty of words bump each other in his throat, fighting to be said.

“You were worried about me!”, is what comes out instead. 

“You are the most annoying man I’ve ever met”, Molly says, without any real heat to his voice. “Sit tight. I’m going to try something.”

Fjord watches as Molly’s red eyes grow dark, and the serpent tattoo on his hand bursts out and starts bleeding. He is about to say something when he feels every last drop of blood in his veins shift and accelerate, as if the tiefling had reached into his body and physically squeezed his heart. 

He watches in mute amazement as small veins in his arms shatter and poison drips out of it, floating into the air and dropping on the ground a few feet away, sizzling for a few moments before disappearing. 

Molly wipes the blood that fell off his nose from his upper lip and sits back.

“I didn’t know you could do that”, Fjord says, now feeling completely recovered - and immensely hungry.

“I didn’t either”, the other man replies.

Molly looks at his hand, where his tattoo sits perfectly closed up and inconspicuous and shakes his head.

“Anyway, let’s get a move on”, he says, “I’m eager to sleep in a town that doesn’t ruin my boots”.

They slowly gather themselves and carefully manoeuvre the cart out of the swamp with some difficulty. Their splashing, slow steps have nearly taken them back to the wretched town of Berleben when Molly speaks again.

“Next time you want to charge senselessly into battle, I would advise you not to die”, he says, not taking his eyes off the road ahead. 

“You’ll find I did  _ not _ die, Molly”, Fjord replies.

Molly turns to face him, his left eyebrow taking a life of its own.

“You’re so lucky you’re beautiful”, he deadpans and rides ahead. 

Fjord stares after him for a moment and feels the thing that was wreaking havoc on his chest earlier lull to a pleasant, everlasting warmth that spreads all the way to his fingertips from the centre of his chest, then rushes to catch up to him.

***********

_ Watching.  _

He’s in the water. It is dark. He does not know where it ends or begins, does not know what he’s doing there, does not know where he’s supposed to go.

He knows one thing, though. He knows he’s drowning.

_ Potential _ .

He’s been here before. In this water. In this ocean. He’s seen it before. He remembers the fire. He knows.

_ Learn. _

He thinks he’s sinking. It’s hard to know in all this darkness. The invisible eye watches him. The water presses against his chest from the inside and he feels glee.

_ Grow. _

He still has air in his lungs, the last of it. He could use it to make bubbles, look for the surface, abandon the dream. He thinks about abandoning the dream. 

He keeps his mouth closed.

_ Provoke _ .

There’s ice in his veins and it burns him. He thinks it will leave a scar on his vein. He stops breathing and the falchion appears in his hand.

_ Consume. _

Hunger. Hunger and metal to breathe when the air has left him. He puts the sword in his mouth and tastes the blood. It’s salty.

He swallows.

_ Reward. _

The water permeates his open throat and the salt mixes with his blood. Agreement. Pain. Peace.

_ Patience. _

He wakes.

  
  


The first breath hurts and it is not enough, and he tries to stand up in bed desperately. He coughs, and coughs, trying to find some air, and drops of blood and salt water fall from his mouth and land in his heaving, damp chest.

A body squirms by his side and a hand reaches out to pat him irritably. He grips it tightly enough that his knuckles are white. 

“What the fu-”, Molly starts, and stops mid-yawn when he sees the half-orc, hand trembling as he wipes away the blood, spit and waster that dribbled out of his lower lip.

The tiefling sits up immediately and lets his hand hover in the air near Fjord’s cheek until the warlock gives an almost imperceptible nod, and then he places it in his neck, rubbing small, soothing circles with his thumb on his jaw.

“I’ve had it again”, Fjord says, “the dream. It was different, although I cannot remember why.    
I was drowning. I ate a fucking sword and I was drowning-”

He snaps his jaw shut and concentrates on breathing, focusing on the gentle heat of Molly’s hand on his skin. 

Breathing comes easily once his hands stop shaking, and he grimaces as he moves his wet hair away from his forehead.

“That was a bad one”, he says.

“I saw as much”, Molly replies.

Fjord produces his falchion in his hand and studies the engravings and algae etched in its blade. He swallows around the metallic aftertaste in the back of his throat. 

Molly extends his hand slowly and traces meaningless glyphs on the eye that sits on the hilt of the blade, dead and set in stone and always watching. He looks tired, uncharacteristically quiet, and the slight wrinkles that form at the end of his drooped eyelids are as much from worry as they are from exhaustion.

“Did you try speaking to it?”, he asks. 

“It seemed the wrong thing to do.”

Molly nods, considering this, and Fjord marvels at the fact that he does not have to wonder whether he believes him.

“I think he knows something about me”, Fjord says.

He ponders his own words for a minute and shakes his head, shrugging as if to shake off the remnants of the dream. 

It’s strange how vulnerability works. He’s opened raw and exposed, the depths of himself he himself have not explored yet laying there for everyone - for  _ him  _ \- to see. And in return, the gentleness seems to burst through the seams that keep Molly together, as if he was a glass full to the brim where a new drop has fallen.

And it feels right, this unnamed thing between them. It’s comfortable and safe and Fjord finds himself not having to struggle to keep his footing. And Mollymauk is beautiful, especially now, as he leans forward to press a small, chaste kiss on his lips.

“We’ve been over this”, Molly says, and he sounds gentle, lighter than he normally does.

“I know”, Fjord says. The words hang in the air for a moment before he repeats it again, with a defeated sigh. “I know”.

He lays back down in their cot. 

"I'm sorry for waking you", Fjord says, reaching out towards the tiefling who has sprawled by his side. 

The half-orc's fingers begin traveling up Molly's forearm, tracing the swirling lines of his tattoos and scars. He feels like kissing them, but is too drowsy to move. 

"You can wake me anytime, darling".

Fjord's heart skips a beat, and he waits for the joke that should follow the word. But it never comes. 

The tiefling sighs contentedly under Fjord's light touch, and the term floats in the air, setting on Fjord's chest as a blanket. 

_ He's a smug bastard _ , Fjord thinks.  _ He's a smug bastard and I'm going to fall in love with him _ .

Darling, he had said. He grabs the tiefling's hand and brings it to his lips, pressing a kiss to the wrist, and one to every knuckle. 

Darling.

He thinks about the future, and the possibility to hear that word directed at him again. He thinks of the depths of the ocean and a hand on his in the morning, and he smiles.

"Good night, Molly".

**********

Fjord opens his eyes to the morning sun and immediately deeply regrets doing so. The sunlight hits his eyes like needles sinking deep into his brain, and he shuts them tightly.

He groans.

He tries to move his dry, cracked lips and the rotten corpse-like taste in the back of his throat makes him recoil. 

He groans again.

“Stop moving”, a voice comes from the other side of the bed, and he’d laugh at how miserable it sounds if turning his head towards it hadn’t made him feel ill.

Molly stares at him with one eye cracked open, looking like he’d rather crawl back into the grave than bear another instant of consciousness.

“You look like shit”, Fjord says, and nearly startles at how cracked his voice sounds. 

“Yes, well”, Molly says, frowning at the feeling of his dry tongue against the roof of his mouth, trying to find his cutting wit and defeatefly settling on: “you still like me”.

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that”, he says, already carefully manoeuvring around his dizziness to get closer to the tiefling.

Molly moves his chin up, still pouting, to grant Fjord better access, and their lips meet in a chaste kiss.

“Good morning”, Fjord says when he pulls apart.

“Fuck you”, Molly replies, miserably, before pushing forwards and deepening the kiss.

Both of them almost immediately pull apart, wincing.

“In case I never told you, your morning breath is appalling”, Fjord remarks. 

“It was not me who drank three jars of ale at the same time”, the tiefling replies.

Fjord pales at the memory and has to fight down the wave of nausea his stomach accusingly sends his way. 

“Come here”, he says, extending his arm to give the other man space.

Molly shuffles towards him, still looking adorably miserable, and sinks his face on Fjord’s neck, letting his tattooed limbs sprawl on top of Fjord’s torso. He sighs, and his breath tickles the warlock’s skin in a very pleasant way. The half-orc’s hand starts caressing the back of the tiefling’s tangled hair and neck almost of its own accord, and he thinks the other man’s horn jewels will leave a mark on his cheek, but he finds he doesn’t mind in the slightest.

They drowse like this for a time, neither of them could tell how long, but enough for their stomach to rumble with appetite and for their awareness to filter in through the headache.

“How are you feeling?”, asks Fjord where he’s still petting the other man’s hair.

Molly hums an undignified sound, craning his neck to press a grateful, lingering kiss to the warlock’s chin. 

“I have awoken with worse company after one of these nights, I suppose”, he says with a smile, leaning forward to press another lingering kiss to Fjord’s cheekbone this time. 

Fjord wordlessly moves his face, and Molly gets the clue. He kisses him, and then pulls apart for air and kisses him again, and again, and time moves slowly on their muddled minds as the heat between them simmers and rises. 

Molly’s lips wander off from Fjord’s mouth, seeking his earlobe and neck, eliciting small noises from the back of the half-orc’s throat. The tiefling sinks his fangs into his neck, kissing the bite mark he leaves, and something breaks inside Fjord, who puts his hands on both sides of Molly’s hips and flips him over, climbing on top of him. 

The movement leaves them both dizzy for a moment, still reeling from their hangover, and it takes them a few seconds of pressing their foreheads together with their eyes closed to regain control over their senses. 

“Do you want to stop?”, Fjord wants to answer, but Molly moves quicker, pressing his thigh between the other man’s legs as he goes back to kissing him. 

Fjord’s pins the tiefling’s wrists to the mattress and greedily drinks in the whimper that it elicits from him, unwillingly feeling himself blush when he surrounds his hips with his legs entirely. 

Fjord’s hands fly to the other man's shirt and are nearly done with its laces when three booming knocks break the silence.

“Hey, lovebirds! Beau wants to talk to you!”, Jester shouts through the shut door.

Fjord sighs and begins to pull apart from the spot of Molly’s neck he was ravishing, but Molly immediately grabs the back of his head to pull him down once again, only acknowledging the urgency in Jester’s voice to scream back at her. 

“Tell Beauregard to fuck off!”, he says. 

“Our coin purses are missing!”, Jester screams back.

_ That _ gives him pause.

“Damnit”, he mutters. 

“We’ll be right outside”, Fjord screams, and they hear Jester murmur something as she goes, presumably to abruptly wake up Caleb and Nott as well. 

“I was in the middle of something important, you know”, Molly grumbles as Fjord pulls away slowly, as if it physically pained him to do so. 

“We can come back up after breakfast?”, Fjord asks, knowing the rest of the group will probably lure them into some kind of long-winded trouble that would keep them busy and most likely in life threatening situations until the end of the day. 

Molly leans towards him - from where he’s muttering “I’m never drinking again” as he struggles with the lacing of his boots, his reflexes still worsened by the killing hangover - and moves to kiss him with all the fire still left between them, and Fjord just barely manages to break the kiss before it descends into more and he’s unable to move away.

“Don’t worry, pretty one”, he says, with a smirk that feels like a treasured secret between them, “we have all the time in the world”. 

************

The story is simple. 

A blade sinks into a chest, and blood pours out. It stains the snow, trickling down a body that falls to its knees.

Eyes are turned upwards, never shut, and there is regret in them. 

They say:  _ Not now. _ They say:  _ Well, fuck you too.  _ And they say: _ I’m sorry _ .

Someone screams a name and an answer never comes.

Dawn breaks over the mountains. 

  
  


Fjord sits in the ground and looks forward. He’s silent, and as still as the world around him, where it seems like even the gentle falling of the snow is an affront. 

The only sounds breaking the somber silence are the faint whooshing of the cape and his breathing. 

Even the colours seem to be weary to approach the scenery. There is only grey and white surrounding him. The grey of stones that sit unassumingly on freshly moved frozen soil, and the white of the snow that sits on top of them, as if laying a blanket on top of a man that has turned into memory. 

His companions - his friends - sit in silence and cannot bear to look at him, to look at the stillness of his shoulders, that are hunched and tense, as if they carried the weight of the entire world on them. 

He isn’t talking. None of them have been talking. Not since Yasha’s broken scream stopped rolling over the naked, steep fields. No one dared to raise a hand to stop her leaving, just as no one dares to break the silence Fjord has shrouded himself into.

Perhaps absolute silence is the only way to bear the absence of a voice by his side. 

So Fjord keeps sitting, motionless. And staring at the sad pile of rocks, as if his gaze could somehow pierce their surface, and his grief alone could lift them from the face they obscure. And as if they could grant him any sort of answer to the questions that plague him, that lurk underneath the emptiness on his head. But they cannot provide said answers, and he cannot have them.

The quiet has reached into his chest and settled there. There is no sudden hit of sorrow, no wave of impossible pain. There is only emptiness, and a ring in his ears. Incomprehension.

He remembers - no, not remembers, that’s too final, too much. He sees the man whose name his lips form around, in a noiseless plea. He sees him, as vividly as the sun itself, hears his voice in the snow, feels his touch in the wind. One last gift from him, one last glimpse into a colorful existence before the storm that awaits. 

In the end, it’s Beau the one who gets up and moves towards the warlock, her crunching steps on the fallen snow deafening now. 

“Fjord”, she says.

She gets no answer.

“Fjord”, she repeats, and carefully places a hand on his shoulder after a few seconds.

Fjord tilts his head towards her, every so slightly.

“We need to leave”, she says, and swallows when she sees the warlock's jaw tighten. 

“I know”, the half-orc says, slowly, through his clenched jaw, as if it pained him to speak. 

Beau stares at him, and the hand on Fjord’s shoulder clenches.

“Look”, she starts, more hesitatingly than he’s ever heard her sound before, “I know this sucks, but he wouldn’t have wanted you to stay here like this”.

Fjord sighs, and his entire body seems to deflate. The dizziness threatens to overcome him, as if he let out a breath that he had been holding for hours. 

“It doesn’t fucking make sense”, he says, his voice so raw Beau shivers. “Why did this happen? Why the fuck did this happen?”

Beau shook her head and carefully moved her arm to put it across Fjord’s shoulders.

“I don’t know”, she says, “I don’t know what to say. But we tried. We really tried.”.

Fjord nodded wordlessly. The silence stretched on for a bit, just enough the sun to start setting. Beau gently nudged Fjord.

“Hey”, she said, “I know I’m an asshole and terrible at this, but I promise this will not be in vain. And I promise I’ll be here for you.”

“I know”, Fjord whispers, lacking the will and strength to do much else.

“Come on”, she says, getting to her feet.

Fjord gets up without taking the hand she offers, his muscles aching from the cold, his heart aching from the loss, and looks at the improvised grave for a few more seconds, takes in the coat that stands alone against the wind, marking Mollymauk’s final resting place.

It seems unfair that no one who crosses this forsaken land will see that coat and its vivid colors flying into the wind and understand what it means, what was lost. It seems unfair that the land he rests in will be trampled and reaped and no one will know whose rest it is they are disturbing.

Fjord closes his eyes when he has to turn his back to the grave and walk away, trying to push away the thoughts that call it a betrayal. 

He realizes, suddenly, with a terrible sense of finality, that this is it. He will never kiss him again, will never wake to a sore chest from having horns digging into it all night. He will never again hear a smirking voice call him beautiful, hold him as if he actually  _ were  _ beautiful, and keep him awake all night with only his mouth and a crinkle of mischief in his eyes.

He will never see Mollymauk’s face again. 

His steps carry him far away from the grave, and the broken body that lies inside forever, and it’s only Beau’s hand on his shoulder and Jester’s gentle hand in his what stops him from turning and running and dig his hands into the dirt to unearth was what taken from him, to rip him away from the earth that wants to keep him hidden. 

“How are you?”, Beau will ask him again that night, when they find a place to rest.

Fjord will shrug, helplessly, and look at her with his hand clenched into a fist.

“I never even got to say goodbye”.

**********

Fjord’s steps take him across another camp, at another point in time, towards a familiar figure that sits partially obscured by the shadows at the edge of the hill they had chosen to rest on. 

Yasha’s features are half illuminated and the bright flames of the campfire create dancing silhouettes in it, a daring play between light and shadow, just as much as the rest of her. 

It’s a warm night, warmer than it ought to be this time of the year, and the skies are clear and open. The entire world seems to be breathing around them in harmony, as if it was taking a break and allowing itself a moment of peace.

Fjord passes Yasha a bowl of the dubious but warm stew Jester has been trying to produce for the better part of an hour, alternately shifting between asking Nott to stir and frowning at the cauldron as if it was the source of all her problems. Yasha gives him a small, grateful smile and takes the bowl, gently holding it between her big hands before starting to eat.

The silence stretches on for a long time as they both sit and watch the shadows in mutual company, and the night is so peaceful than Fjord thinks he could almost forget about the world and the war brewing outside the little circle of life their campfire grants them, if he tried. 

“You do know what day it is today, don’t you?”, Yasha asks after a while, so quietly that Fjord has to strain to listen to her.

He knows. She knows he knows, as does everyone else. It’s written in the sympathy in Caleb’s eyes, in the way Beau has spent the day trying to dance around her blunt edges in his company, in the way Jester and Nott periodically kept probing him with jokes and jabs to gauge his emotional state, and in the way Yasha stares at him now, more unguarded than she usually presents herself as, but with the same aura of soothing, quiet gentleness that seems to follow her everywhere.

“I do know”, he says, after a bit, “it’s been a year already today”.

Yasha nods. 

“How are you?”, she asks. 

Fjord sighs, stirring around his cooling food in the bowl as he ponders the question. His voice sounds tired and kind when he speaks - as it usually does, Yasha thinks. And she feels a surge of warmth for the half-orc that sits cross-legged at her side, bearing his wounds for all to see, and clinging to his kindness and endurance. 

She thinks of him, and of herself, and thinks if she had known her before, her life might have gone a different way.

When Fjord speaks, he does so slowly, but with certainty in his voice.

“I’m fine”, he says, “at least as much as any other day. I don’t know. It doesn’t seem like there’s anything different to today. Just another day without him, again, you know”.

He waves his hand as he says this, as if driving away his own thoughts, and Yasha can’t help but be reminded of another man who frequently did the same, once upon a time. Can’t help but wonder whether Fjord knows how much of themselves belonged to the other. 

“I understand that”, she replies. 

Fjord sighs again and looks up. The night sky greets his gaze like a mother would a stray child, offers the faint light of multiple distant stars to him, and the silver that leaks from the moon as a gift. It’s a beautiful night, he thinks, and beauty tends to hurt a lot these days. 

“I miss him”, he says

It is a sentiment so persistent and true that it feels futile to say it out loud. It’s something etched deep within his bones, at the core of what makes him himself, the melancholy, the lingering pain, the wishing and the wistful wondering and the regret that lurks around the corners of his mind, waiting for his darker days to emerge triumphant. 

His friends help. They do, as much as they seem to think they don’t. They ease the crushing weight of the mornings when he wakes up on cold beds, and the impossible loneliness of the nights. They fill in the spaces where the other man’s remarks would be with laughter and unending words, and he is grateful, and he loves them, he really does. But the wound in his heart haven’t closed yet for all that they have made the bleeding stop.

He misses Mollymauk as dearly as a piece of himself that has been lost and, most of all, he misses the idea of being whole, of having the opportunity to chase that ache away. 

This is what has been lost, he thinks. Not a past, not really. A future. The possibility of one. He had almost seen his future, like a golden path that stretched ahead of him, glistening, starting from Molly’s smile and passing right through the center of Fjord’s chest. He had begun to trek it, gotten a glimpse of it, just a taste, before it was snatched away, leaving him empty and aware of his own emptiness in a way that he hasn’t been able to shake.

“I do miss too”, Yasha says after such a long time Fjord was wondering whether she’d even heard him. “He was a very special man, one that helped me greatly, even when he had nothing. One that helped everyone, in his own way”.

Fjord laughs, just a small snicker. “Oh, he knew”, he recalls, “he was so self-absorbed. So proud. God, what a bastard.”

Yasha smiles and shakes his head. “He really was, wasn’t he? If you’d seen him in the early days, when he first arrived at the circus, when he first got his tattoos… The way he paraded around.”

“He was a beautiful man, though”, Fjord added.

Yasha smiles and leans towards him. “You would know.”

He  _ had _ been a beautiful man, so beautiful Fjord remembers his breath being taken away by the sheer force of it. He had been a wonder, a sight to behold and cherish, beautiful in violence, nearly dancing across the battlefield, and beautiful in the intimacy of being wrapped around Fjord’s body. 

Fjord finds himself running the details of the tiefling’s face through his mind one by one - his nose, the shape of his fangs against his lower lip when he smiled, the wrinkle he got in his forehead when faced with people he disliked, the rebel lock of purple hair that curled around the base and stuck to his forehead no matter how many times he pushed it to the back of his horn, the shade of purple in his skin when Fjord hadn’t shaved and he’d spent too long kissing him. 

He grits his teeth against the sensation of vertigo only gaps in your memory where familiar things that used to be there aren’t anymore can give you, and knows he’s forgotten details. Little, unimportant details whose absence smudge the picture of the man he keeps at the forefront of his mind. 

Time has been robbing him of the little bits of his lover that he has left for a long while now, and he’s powerless against it, only able to cling to a failing memory that is slowly letting go far sooner than he can bring himself to. 

_ Do you remember much about him? _ , he wants to ask Yasha. But he doesn’t, because he’s afraid of the answer. He doesn’t want to know if the man they remember is as real as the effect his life had on them. He doesn’t want to know whether the last people on earth who truly cherish his memory have been missing a man that does not exist, just a collage of recollections their grief put together nonsensically. He doesn’t want to know.

He thinks he would remember him forever, feels like he does, but he doesn’t want to know. 

“I miss him”, he says again, and Yasha doesn’t reply, but leans slightly towards him as she joins him in staring at the night sky. 

If Fjord pushes to the limits of his imagination, he can almost see a brief flash of purple and red in the horizon, like the greeting of a new day and the farewell of an old one that will never truly leave. 

“Yasha”, he says, and he hesitates, the words bubbling in his throat for a few seconds before they leave him. “I don’t think I remember his voice”.

Yasha doesn’t say anything at first, and then her cold, gentle hand grabs his. 

“I don’t think I do, either”.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> any canon divergences from episode 27 onwards is only because i haven't reached past that point


End file.
